Labor
by EverleighBain
Summary: A series of short stories involving a specific aspect of Aragorn's experience as a healer, each from a different time of his life. Rated for medical situations and depictions of childbirth.
1. Chapter 1

_A/N: This is the first of five ficlets from various times in Aragorn's experience involving the arrival of new life. There are descriptions of childbirth in some of these, and though I've done my best to be tasteful in the presentation, I'll give a warning for the potentially squeamish reader._

_Lavish thanks to cairistiona7 and levade, who both read this over for me before I posted it. Seriously, folks, if you're reading LotR fanfic, you need to be reading these two authors. Their stories are magnificent. Go have a look, and leave them a nice review!_

_All recognizable elements belong to J.R.R. Tolkien._

**Nine**

The boy stirs slowly, sprawled belly-down and askew on the mattress, pillow discarded in a slump somewhere to the east. Waking is a labor with no daylight to lure him. He has not yet learned to lunge into awareness bristling, prepared for any peril, but he will learn. All in time. Now a softly rocking hand on one bare shoulder blade ushers him up from the dream-caverns. He smells pine and thunderstorms and the sweet dustiness of horse. Elrohir.

"S'dark still…."

"It is very late. Fledge is hunting for a place. Do you still wish to watch?"

Immediately his eyes snap open, bright in the glow of the hall sconce that feathers around the half-open door. He scrambles floorward, snags in tangled blankets, plummets headfirst from the bed. His foster-brother catches his arm and laughs and untangles him.

"Calm yourself. You will crack the tile with your head."

"We will miss it, Elrohir!"

"There is time. Maiden mare, she will not rush. Dress first. It is cool out."

Together they depart the house and the last mere of lantern light on the terrace. They pause on the path for Estel to lean against Elrohir and unwad the stocking in the toe of his shoe, clumped from being donned too hastily. On they go. All the creeping night-things are intent on their courtships and their thrumming sonnets are thick in the air. A bat whirs and creaks and wheels away. The grass is as high as Elrohir's hips and Estel's underarms and rustles with dew, but the boy does not notice when his tunic and breeches begin to dampen and drip. He tries to match the silent step of his companion who glides shadowlike a half-pace ahead, but Elrohir and his long legs keep him on the threshold of a lope. Presently a hand splayed over his sternum draws him up.

"There, in the willows."

The boy's breath catches; in the thin light of the sickle moon he sees a paler shape against the gloom, slim legs and heavy barrel, head low, heaving softly. She bites at her belly and shifts and lies down, her front legs folding first. This arrangement does not suit her and soon she heaves upright and lumbers further beneath the eaves of the weepers.

Elrohir's voice is a puff against his ear. "To the left. We will sit and watch where we will not disturb her."

They creep and settle with their backs against the bole of a fallen crack-willow. If she has seen them she gives no sign. Now they are near enough that Estel can see splashes of sweat on her neck and sides. His sight sharpens in the dark; black turns to violet; all things before him grow outlines and become themselves. He knows this place, knows the goshawk that nests in the pine that stands sentry beside the pond, knows the does and fawns that come to lap the water beneath it. In the blackberry bramble a badger has kitted; when first he heard their mewling he had wished very much to wriggle in and down and bury his head in the burrow and find them, warm and blind and wriggling, no longer than the span of his hand, like stout striped kittens. His brothers would not let him. _Their nana will claw your eyes out, _Elrohir had laughed. _She loves them too dearly to suffer a boy._ Elladan had not looked up from his whetting but had said with accustomed austerity, _If_ _I catch you hunting badgers, their nana will be the least of your concerns_.

The grey mare turns and whuffles the ground and her forelegs break at the knees; she lowers heavily, the weight of her burden denting the grass. Estel has forgotten fawns and hawklings and badger kits. He thinks now only of foals. Gangle-limbed and downy-muzzled, all exuberance and legs. How they sneak up on unsuspecting anomalies—a toad in the grass, a rock turned over strangely—and deem it at the last to be a perilous foe, and whirl away and fly with springed spines back to the safety of their mothers. The thought makes him smile.

But this mare—his mare—she is doing hard work. He can hear the breath huffing out of her, in double rhythm to his own. She flattens onto her side and tries to roll and beside him Elrohir murmurs, "Ai, young one, none of that."

"She is hurting," whispers the boy.

Elrohir glances down at him, his grin a fleeting glimmer in his dark face. "So it must be," he whispers back. "It will not last forever."

"Will we go to her?"

"No! All is well. We will wait."

Estel is not satisfied. He thinks if Elrohir would let him he could creep up, singing softly to her songs of peace and safety, and lay his hands on her and ease the clutching ache deep in her abdomen. He knows that is what hurts her from the way she arches to the side, nipping at her ribcage, from the way she kicks at her underbelly as if it is beleaguered by flies.

But he obeys Elrohir, and huddles a little nearer to him, feels that strong, lean hand rise and knead his hair for a moment before settling again to stillness. He finds he is content after all, to wait here with his brother beside him. He will wait and watch, and remember all he sees.

-o0o-

The ragged eastern horizon begins to wash with pallor. The moon is setting behind the pines and all through its descent the grey mare has shifted and panted and groaned. Elrohir has not moved, and the boy has matched his watchfulness, though his seat is beginning to ache and grow cold, and his left foot crackles with nerves from sitting trapped beneath him for two hours or more. But in the dimmest dawn the mare throws her forelegs out before her and pushes her chest up, barrel and haunches following in a heave. Elrohir bumps Estel with his elbow.

"Soon," he says.

Her tail is kinked. Beneath it is a silvery bulge that recedes a little and then emerges again, doubling in length, and so it continues for some minutes. Estel sits entranced, feeling as if he is soon to witness a thing through which he should not breathe for fear of sullying it. And then, in the most sudden occurrence all night, the bulge ruptures in a gush and revealed are tiny hooves and a long muzzle, the pink tongue peeking out, and then comes poll and neck and shoulders and the grey mare gives a last rally and her son slithers forth and falls and sprawls in a sodden jumble in the grass. He is black with wet and thrashes feebly and Estel tries to stand, a soft cry lurching in his throat. Elrohir catches him by the hip and pulls him down and snug against his side.

"She will tend him. Watch."

And she does. She turns and finds him in his nest of ryegrass and laves his backbone with her tongue. It seems to Estel she has forgotten all the pain the foal has cost her; in her own parlance of touch and rumbles she speaks to him of love.

"It happened so quickly," Estel whispers.

"Mares are swift deliverers," says Elrohir. "And foals swift to their feet."

Already the dark colt is attempting his first rise. Soon he gains it and staggers sideways and crumples and must gain it again. The mare whickers encouragement and tries to aid him with her nose, but upsets his elusive balance, and the effort begins again.

"Perhaps we should help him stand," Estel says carefully. His fingers ache to feel that black coat, wiry with damp, to trace the hard, new muscles bunched beneath the hide. He wants to lay his hand flat on Fledge's forehead and tell her she is a good girl, a brave girl, tell her he is very proud of her.

Elrohir laughs, as softly as the grey mare murmurs to her child. "Have a care your desire to help does not turn to meddling," he says, brow firm and eyes merry.

"He is strong," says Estel, paying the reprimand little mind. He stares as the foal, standing now on tremulous limbs, begins to totter and nudge along the bulge of his mother's belly.

Elrohir lays a hand on the boy's shaggy hair and scrunches it so it skews to one side. "In two or three years he will be stronger," he says. "Strong enough to bear a boy."

For a while there is silence. The dark foal nuzzles and the black head vanishes beneath a grey flank. The mare lifts a hind foot, her ears sweeping back against her head. But she does not kick or sidestep and the ears come forward again and she licks her lips and curves her neck and nibbles the base of a black tail.

Elrohir murmurs, "Good girl."

Estel stirs beside him. He glances down to see the boy's knees drawing up and his chin coming down. There he sits, all his lankiness gathered up within the containment of his arms. He looks thoughtful, and a little troubled, and so Elrohir knuckles beneath his ribs until he squirms and laughs and arches to the side.

"Speak, stripling," says Elrohir. "I see some question festering; have it out."

Estel's eyebrows crumple together. For a moment his lips thin with thoughtfulness. Then, "It does not seem a very good… method."

Had Elrohir fewer years' practice schooling his features, the amusement he feels at this statement may have shown in his face. Instead he trains his eyes forward and says, "Elucidate."

At this command Estel begins to fidget; he runs his thumb and forefinger up a long stalk of fescue until all the seed fronds are gathered in a spray from the top of his fist. He opens his hand and lets the first breeze of dawn sift them away before he says, "He seems a large foal. And it is not so large a… doorway."

Elrohir ruthlessly smothers a laugh. When he trusts himself to speak without betraying it he says, "You think it a faulty design?"

Estel ponders. "I am not the designer," he says at length, deliberately.

"Indeed not."

"I do not understand how wounds knit, or broken bones, but knit they do."

"If tended correctly."

"And eggs become chicks, and tadpoles turn to frogs, and the cutworms on the cabbages become white butterflies."

"And all warm things with skin and hair that nurse their young must do as Fledge has done."

Here the dark brows furrow, and Elrohir waits patiently for Estel's thoughts to coalesce. He knows they have been incubating in the boy's head for as long as he has been aware that new life is no well-ordered thing, but comes forth in heaves and gushes and sodden blood-streaked floundering, crumpled wings and phlegmy breathing, cracking and stretching and secret labor in the small hours before dawn. He has watched eggs hatch and hounds whelp and now this scrap of hooved shadow that suckles wetly a furlong away.

He lifts his head and asks of his brother, "Elves as well, and Men, by the same method?"

Elrohir nods, his mouth a study in solemnity.

Estel scowls. "I think Eru was kinder to the birds and frogs and butterflies."

-o0o-

_Thank you so much for reading! I'll try and post the next in the series in a few days._


	2. Chapter 2

_A/N: Part the Second! This is where things might venture into "T" rating, so I'll give a warning: babies are born and mild innuendo is exchanged. Translations at the end; all Rohirric is based on Tolkien's usage of Old English as the language of the Mark._

_Many, many thanks to cairistiona7 and levade for their indefatigable beta work. Have I mentioned they have excellent stories? There's a quick link to their profiles in my "favorites"… rollicking good reading is only a few clicks away!_

_All recognizable elements belong to J.R.R. Tolkien_

**Twenty-six**

He feels each pitchfork prong nipping beneath his belt and resists the urge to suck his gut in, as if squeezing through a narrow space. He grasps for the correct words but the tongue of the Mark is still a rough discordant thing he speaks with his intellect instead of his heart. Right now his intellect wanders somewhere beneath three days' worth of sleeplessness and the persistent ache of his empty belly. But the tines advance a fingerbreadth and at last the words surface and spill from his throat.

"Please, my lady, I can tell you sense of this…"

The old woman wears a caul of sackcloth and a ragged snarl. She begins to screech in Rohirric, the speed and the accent rushing in a jumble over his ears. Her gnarled hands are clawed on the pitchfork handle and he watches them raptly; with no more effort than it takes to twist a tuft of wool into the whorl of a spindle she could pinion a part of him to the wall at his back. The prospect brings his scant vocabulary thrashing to the surface. He chokes out whatever words he thinks may soothe her: _ridda_ and _sweordbora_ and _esnewyrhta_, all to explain that he fights for Thengel King. He throws in the name of the Third Marshal as well, the commander he serves beneath, though here in the Westfold the name of Éowulf Éowaldson seems to carry little weight. Either that or she does not believe his claims of thegnship; he is dark-haired in a country of fair-headed folk, and his accent is so thick sometimes even the men he serves with look at him with mild repugnance, as if he intentionally mangles their guttural speech. He understands far more than he speaks, and attaining the balance is proving a long labor.

He tries in the Common. "I mean no harm, lady, I am a Rider in the éored of the Third Marshal, come from Aldburg to reinforce Helmheard against the hillmen—" and at last a word she recognizes. Her eyes slant with fury. The press of the pitchfork becomes a bite and he swallows a whimper. In a final gamble he speaks a word the Riders have come to know him by, one that seems to buy him a measure of regard. _R__veoroldlæce_. A healer of the body. In a land where a mere scratch often turns septic, where the lung-fever so common in late winter kills the young and the aged in swaths, where infections of the womb and breast make many orphans of the newly born, a man schooled in leech-lore is a man welcome in any house. Even a man discovered unbidden beneath the lean-to of a lonely homestead.

The trio of stings above his groin relent a little. "_Læce?_" she demands.

"_Læce_," he repeats, and presses his own hand to his sternum. "My companion is…" he fumbles for the least threatening word, one that might placate an unguarded woman who fears the arrival of strange men. "_Áfyred_," he says at last. "An Eorling. He will speak for me."

"I see no companion," the old woman growls, this time in a dialect he recognizes, the inflection nearer to that of the Eastfold.

At last his wretched cohort deigns to show himself. He appears around the side of the lean-to and takes in the scene with a sweep of his eyes. His hair and beard are yellow beneath the grime and dried gore and his lamed pauldrons make brawny shoulders seem brawnier. His arms rise and fold. He seems content to stand and watch the spectacle without interfering.

Aragorn swallows his pride and entreats the newcomer with his eyes, and at last the vexing Rohirric sword-whelp grins and opens his mouth and says, "Peace, grandmother. I am Folcred, son of Eadlac, sworn man in the household of the Third Marshal. We seek only your succor—we have been separated from our éored, and our horses would thank you for a stint at your well and a ration of grain, if you can spare it."

At the sound of his voice the old woman lowers her pitchfork and shuffles a half-circle until she faces him.

"Eadlac Eadnothson?"

"The same," says Folcred.

"I knew your grandfather."

"Then you will know also his grandson is who he says he is, and when I say we mean no harm you may believe me. We ask only for hospitality until we are recovered to move on."

The old woman casts the intruder behind her a dark look. "Only a stupid man comes skulking after what might be given freely."

"We thank you," says Folcred with a dip of his head. "You must pardon my companion; he hails from the North, where men are savages and have no courtesy. I will speak for him. He is a thegn of Éowulf, and we have all but cured his barbarity."

"He claims he is a leech," says the old woman.

"He can patch a tear and set a break," says Folcred. "Though the leech in Aldburg claims he is skilled in other things as well. If you have need of a physician, he will gladly attend you in exchange for your generosity."

For a long moment the old woman seems to ponder this, and Aragorn sighs softly, and prepares himself for bunions or constricted veins or pleurisy, or any of the other afflictions of the very old. He has little in the way of materials: only his kit of instruments, as precious to him as his sword or his saddle, and a stout canister of powdered coagulant, and a supply of opiate in a carven vial he has all but exhausted in the last days. He hopes whatever service she might require of him does not involve her teeth; of all the skills he learned beneath his foster-father's hand, the craft of dentistry is the only one that can set his stomach to writhing.

As he considers these things, the old woman turns her head and regards him briefly from the corner of her eye.

"We will succor you," she says at last, turning back to address the waiting Rider. "You may water your horses and set them to the rick; our grain ran out a month ago. But first you must come with me." She shuffles out into the light, employing the pitchfork as a walking stick.

"We would tend our horses first, grandmother," Folcred says, though he shifts aside to let her pass. "They have made a mighty flight from the Gap."

"You will come with me," she says again. "The boy will tend them. Frethi!" She screeches the last word, and a skinny boy scrambles from around the corner of the cot. "Look after the horses," she snaps.

Folcred catches his arm as he passes. "Walk them before you water them," he says. "They must cool before they drink."

"Yes, my lord."

"And do not get beneath the big one, he'll paw you right over the ears."

"Yes, lord."

Folcred releases the boy and catches up to the old woman as she leads the way through the door of the sagging hovel. When he comes alongside the Northerner he says silkily, baring a bit of canine, "_Áfyred_?"

Aragorn snorts. "Barbarity?"

As soon as they are inside the old woman whirls on them. The tines of the pitchfork nip again near Aragorn's belt.

"I am a barren woman," she says. "The boy is the son of the son of my husband, from his first wife. I have never borne a child and know little of it, else I would not have you here."

For a moment he battles confusion; her words, though not spoken in the unfamiliar dialect she used before, make little sense to him. She seems to speak of childbearing, but surely she is far past such an age. Her hair is ash-grey and patchy as the thatch of her hovel. He glances at Folcred, but before his only translator can help him understand, the old woman pricks him with the pitchfork.

"You have knowledge of birthing?" she demands, her bright eyes boring into him.

"Some," he says truthfully.

At last she lowers her armament. "You had better be as you say you are," she says, and shuffles past the fire pit. In a file the two men follow. In the back of the dim room Aragorn sees a blanket strung on a rope that conceals the furthest corner. The woman props her pitchfork against the wall and ducks behind the screen. Words come to him, too swiftly spoken for him to comprehend, and then the old woman's voice grows sharp with some command. She emerges again, yanking the curtain aside, and does not cease her march until she is inches from him. With a knobbled, crooked forefinger she prods him in the chest.

"If you touch her lewdly I will kill you."

And he looks past her, past the blind she has left open, and sees on the dirt floor in the corner a girl, sweaty and straw-headed and enormous with child. Even as he watches she begins to pant and clutch at the ground. She bares her teeth as if to cry out, but all that emerges is the thinnest whimper.

His eyes fly to the old woman; he knows they are wide with disbelief but he cannot seem to narrow them again.

"Are you a leech or not?" she demands. "She has labored since yestereve. I know not how to aid her, and even if I did, she despises me, and will not let me touch her. Her husband left with the muster a month ago. He is my husband's grandson, and a good enough boy, but he does not beat her often enough…"

As the old woman prattles, Aragorn's gaze return to the girl. The contraction has released her, but her eyes as they dart and light on his and flicker away again are filled with fear.

For a moment he wishes he were anywhere but here in a sagging hovel on the wind-flattened steppe of the Westfold, battle-drained, still wearing the blood of men killed and men tended. This is a task at which he is far less at ease than suturing wounds and cutting out arrows and wrenching limbs back into their sockets. But now the Powers will have their little jest, or else continue with the process of teaching him humility, for the healing in his heart and hands will not allow him to turn away from this patient, however much his decorousness demands it. She is frightened. He knows the sight of him filthy and blood-spattered and outfitted for war does little to allay her fear. And so he draws a deep breath and turns and says to the old woman, "Water. Hot water. And…." His hands raise as he fumbles for the word; they come together in a scrubbing motion; he looks imploringly at Folcred.

"Soap, to clean myself," he says in the Common, and to his great relief Folcred finds no returning witticism, but relays the request in his own tongue. The old woman grumbles but departs to do as she is bid.

"You know what you are doing?" Folcred asks in his heavily accented Westron, sidling closer so he can speak without being overheard.

Aragorn blows out a breath. He loosens the ties of his jerkin and shrugs out of the garment and unlaces the neck of the padded gambeson beneath.

"Of course I do," he says, pulling the leather over his head. "Women are little different than horses. Keep them calm and the pull of the earth will do the rest."

"Why do you undress?" Folcred asks flatly, even as he accepts the gear thrust into his hands. "You are to catch a babe, not make one."

Aragorn snorts. "Perhaps your mother pushed you out on the stable floor with an armed housecarl for a midwife, but most mothers prefer gentler attendance, I would think." He begins to cuff his crusted sleeves. Folcred turns away with his armful of discarded garb, muttering something in Rohirric Aragorn supposes he would rather not hear. Feeling slightly more presentable for the task at hand, he crosses the short distance to the curtained space and crouches in the entry of it. The girl stares at him. After a moment he decides even a crouch might seem intimidating. He lowers to the floor and gathers himself to sit cross-legged.

"Greetings," he says softly. "I am…"

Here he pauses. The name he gives these folk in Rohan is one most of them can scarcely pronounce. The captain of the éored he serves in calls him _Rache_, the scent hound, though for his ease with tracking or as some sort of mild insult, he has not yet determined. They call him other things as well: _Northman_ for the ones who hold him in little regard; _Læce _for the ones whom he has patched or nursed or dragged back from the brink.

But none of these seem fitting now, with this terrified child shrinking away from him as if he intends to season and roast her instead of help her babe emerge unscathed.

Then to his mind unbidden comes a word from a long-ago afternoon spent slumped in a chair in the library of his father's house, casting glances at the wasted sunlight sifting through the window. He had thought darkly to himself that it was a coarse and ugly tongue, and he would never have any use for it. To try and lure his attention back, his tutor had offered him a word, an attempt to make it all seem pertinent. _Know you how they would call you in the Mark?_

"My name is _Tóhyht_," he says, there in that shadowy place, a piece of him. He knows not if it is the meaning of the word itself, or if she somehow senses he has bared a bit of himself to her. But at the name her eyes flicker up to meet his.

"I am a healer," he says, keeping his tone gentle. "I know I am strange, and speak strange, but I will help if you allow."

Another pain grips her then, suddenly enough that she gives a little gasp and grinds her teeth together. Silently he marks the seconds between its onset and release. When her body relaxes again he asks, "How many—how much time? From pain to pain?"

She shrugs.

He swallows. There are other methods to determine how long she may yet labor, but he is loath to propose them. Apart from that, he lacks the words, and the thought of springing such a thing on her without explanation or warning makes his face burn beneath his beard.

Instead he fixes on a memory, of a mare that did not labor idly, but moved and rocked and swayed with the rhythm. "Sometimes," he says, groping for the words. "To walk, it is helpful, make it more quickly…."

To his relief she nods, as if she knows this, and with her hands splayed on the wall behind her, slides up until she is standing. He sees now she cannot be much older than sixteen. She does not let him touch her, but side-by-side they pace the hovel floor, door to curtain and back again, circling the fire pit. When the water is boiling he leaves her long enough to scour his hands and face and forearms until they sting. While he scrubs, he watches her carefully. When the contractions grip her she sinks crouching, or braces against the wash-stand in the corner, or the loom beneath the window. Twice Folcred tries to slip out unnoticed, and twice Aragorn commands him—in a voice somewhat high-pitched—to stay. "She will not understand me!"

"_I_ scarcely understand you."

The old woman has abandoned them, but the girl seems not to notice. Aragorn loses track of the time. At length he thinks perhaps she is withdrawn enough into the concentration of laboring that she would neither notice nor mind his hands upon her.

"Ask her if I may touch her," says Aragorn to Folcred. "To determine how far…."

Folcred gapes at him.

"Ask her!" Aragorn says again, putting a bit of steel behind the words, and Folcred sulkily obeys.

The girl shakes her head vehemently from where she squats against the wall.

Aragorn takes a measured breath. "Tell her I will not hurt her; tell her I will only feel her belly, to make sure the child is positioned to be born."

Folcred looks as if he is contemplating mutiny, but relays the translation in a mutter.

The girl looks at Folcred as if he has propositioned her with some indecent thing, and says something in a crisp tone that sends him storming for the entrance. "_You_ ask her," Folcred snaps, and slams the door behind him.

A moment later he reenters. Unbidden he crosses the room to the girl and crouches in front of her and growls in Rohirric, "You will do as he tells you, wench, or your husband will return to a dead wife and a dead son, and that dried up old gibbet of a grandmother will laugh over your grave and get fat on your burial feast. Is that what you want?"

Her eyes are round as shields as she endures this battering; when he says the last again, pressing close to her face, _Is that what you want?_ she rattles her head from side to side.

"I thought not," says Folcred, rising and resuming his post near the door. And when Aragorn lowers to the floor beside her, chafing his hands to warm them, she does not shrink away.

And after that she has not time nor inclination to protest, for the rushes clench her ceaselessly, one after another, and any support or soothing hand she leans gratefully against. She abandons her stoicism and begins to hum the length of each contraction, low in her throat. Between them she trembles. Twice she voids her stomach, and he takes this as a good sign. She is getting nearer.

Dusk is approaching when she begins at the end of each exhale to heave with effort. Her face begins to crease with concentration. To Folcred's utter abhorrence, Aragorn bids him crouch behind her.

"I must be able to see," he explains, lowering to the floor in front of her, and Folcred looks as if he wishes to crawl right out the louver. But crouch he does, and lets her lean her back against him, braced between his knees. And the next contraction comes, and there is a soft head bulging and a warm cloth pressing and a long shrill keen of effort….

"One more, good girl, nearly there—" and he has slipped into Sindarin and does not care, she does not understand him anyway, but he continues, murmuring praise and inane encouragement, and with a final stretching and a last enormous push, the head is born.

And stops. Gently, so gently, he pulls it towards her back, knowing now the shoulder should slip out, but it does not. And he does not hesitate but delves with seeking fingers to find it there, wedged tight behind her pubic bone.

"Over. Folcred, tell her to turn over, she must get on hands and knees, Folcred!" Even as he speaks the words he is turning her and pressing her forward, ignoring her whimpering groan, and there is an ease around his fingers and with the gentlest press and pull the tiny shoulder dislodges and a moment later the entire lanky infant slides free into his hands.

-o0o-

They help her to the pallet and ease her down and cover her warmly, and amidst these undertakings she does not take her eyes from her sturdy, squalling son as she cradles him, bruised and blood-streaked, close to her chest. And Folcred shakes and shakes his head, and pulls his hand across his beard, and petitions the Hunter in reverent tones. Once he reaches out to brush a peeling red foot with a fingertip, but is driven back when she yanks the babe away from him and lances him with biting eyes.

Aragorn pulls him aside. The rush of what has happened is beginning to fade, but he remembers those broad newborn shoulders and the damage they caused, and knows he has one more task he cannot leave undone. So he pitches his voice low and says to Folcred, "I must… repair her. Where she tore. But I know not how to tell her, and she is full weary of you. Tell me how to explain to her this thing, so I do not frighten or affront her."

He should have guessed when Folcred begins to grin and then cheerfully complies, drawing out the words until Aragorn can repeat them unerringly, that the Eorling's vengeful mind has already turned to retribution. But he does not guess. Dutifully he learns the unfamiliar phrase and carries it to where the girl is struggling to suckle her son, and he lowers his tone and speaks it to her as gently as he can.

And she rears up, her mouth pinching with fury, and sweeps her hand back and deals him such a resounding slap across the cheek he must retreat until the stars stop wheeling overhead. And Folcred sags against the doorframe and laughs and laughs until Aragorn lunges at him with bared teeth and sends him dancing out into the evening air.

-o0o-

"_Tóhyht_," she says. She should not yet be up unaided—the babe is merely two days old—but she hobbles out to where he stands saddling his horse in the yard beside the lean-to.

"Lady, you should be resting," he says. Her name is Osgyth, but he has found in the last days he is discomfited to use it. He cannot bring himself to be familiar with her, in spite of the fact that she forgave his blunder quickly, and allowed him to tend her as she required. Folcred she will not forgive; she glares at him whenever he enters the house, and scolds him fiercely in her rapid dialect if he comes too near her son. Now she ignores him, skirting wide around his soot-colored horse, and halts a pace away. Aragorn tosses his rein to Folcred and slips a hand beneath her elbow and begins to usher her back towards the hovel.

"_Ne_," she says firmly as she pulls away and faces him, one word at least he understands. She holds her child out as if to she wishes for Aragorn to take him. He knows his face is blank, but he fumbles the bundle from her and grasps it away from his body in both hands.

"_Tóhyht_," she says_. _"_Tóhyht Sithricson_." She gestures towards the babe, speaking a string of words he does not understand, and shakes her head and smiles and adjusts his grip until he holds the infant against his chest in the crook of his elbow. He glances at Folcred, still not comprehending.

"She says she would name him for you," says Folcred. His eyes are peculiarly unreadable. "Tóhyht, son of Sithric. But that is not your name."

Aragorn ignores his companion and dips his head and finds the words come easily this time. "You honor me, lady. I thank you."

And then he lays his hand lightly on the face of the babe he holds and speaks words he need not search for, speaks them from the core of him, the resonant language of his father's people rolling off his tongue like an old familiar lyric. _Blessed arrival, son of Eorl._

-o0o-

"_Tóhyht_?" Folcred scoffs as they trot away in tandem, their tall spears sparking in the sunlight. Back towards the Hornburg, where their company awaits their return. "_Endwærc_, more like. Trying to make of me a midwife."

"You made a decent one, for a louse-infested housecarl."

"And you speak sweetly to the maidens, for a barbarian Northman."

The barbarian Northman flicks his spear up and catches it in both hands like a quarterstaff and raps his companion smartly across the back of his head.

Folcred yelps.

Aragorn returns his spear-butt to his stirrup. "Do not look so affronted. I have owed you that for days."

"You owe nothing that will not be returned in full."

"I look forward to it, Master Rider." But in spite of himself, Aragorn cannot smooth away a smile.

For near to a mile there is silence, a silence that days ago might have fizzled with tension or stretched for hours of avoiding one another's eye. Now it feels almost… comfortable.

Folcred breaks it first. "How many?"

"How many what."

"To how many infants have you served the role of midwife?"

Aragorn ponders for a moment, and shifts in his saddle, as if he is tallying in his head. "Including that one?"

"Yes."

"Including that one… one."

-o0o-

_ridda—_rider

_sweordbora—_swordsman

_esnewyrhta—_mercenary

_áfyred—_an emasculated manservant

_endwærc__—_the polite translation: a pain in the rear. But Folcred wasn't being polite.

-o0o-

_Thanks so much for reading! Part the Third is in the stage of final tweaking, and will be along in a few days_.

_Also, for anyone who might be curious (or doesn't already know), shoulder dystocia is a medical emergency when the infant's shoulders lodge in the birth canal; turning the mother over onto hands and knees, as Aragorn does here, will often widen the pelvic outlet enough to allow the baby to be born._


	3. Chapter 3

_A/N: To be safe, I'm putting a trigger warning on this one, because the material isn't quite as lighthearted as in the last chapter._

_Interminable thanks to cairistiona7 and levade for their advice and encouragement and ability to spot all of my mistakes. Have you read their stories? They really are excellent._

_All recognizable elements belong to J.R.R. Tolkien._

**Fifty-eight**

For three months he has patrolled the haunts near Fornost where even the dourest are troubled to go. He feels the foulness upon him still like a sliding ooze beneath his clothing, but Dírhael's settlement begins to break into view through the trees and already he feels cleaner. The prospect of a good scrub and a long unguarded sleep in front of a snapping fire is enough to quicken his step. It is approaching dusk, and near to freezing. When he crossed the forest stream an hour ago it was turning to glass among the reeds.

The palisaded gate is closed. For a moment he debates if it would be quicker to shimmy up an oak and drop into the village over the wall than it would be to hail the watchmen and wait for them to recognize him, and then wait for them to stumble down from their turrets and fumble with the barred side door, and then wait for them to give their report of the last three months, which undoubtedly will include the latest scandal of the village tart, and how Handor broke his ankle attempting to climb for the highest chestnuts, and how the gooseboy and the pigboy came to fisticuffs over who deserved first forage at the stubble fields, and Dírhael had made them stand nose-to-nose in the square through the entire Fading feast, and everyone who passed by bespattered them with turnip greens….

He elects the route of the oak.

The light is warm in the window of Halbarad's house when he crawls over the wall on a low branch and swings down and drops to the hard ground. The impact sends a darting ache from his cold feet to his knees. He knows he should go around and knock on the front door like a civilized caller, but his ears catch the shrill, laughing voices of two women passing up the path, and the thought of being accosted by gossipers is too wearying to contemplate. Instead he creeps up to the narrow door of Thaliel's tiny scullery and raps as loudly as he dares.

From within comes a drone of voices that cease at his knock. Footsteps, too heavy to be the lady's. Then the door flings open abruptly enough to catch him a ringing blow on the cheek and send him reeling to the side. Halbarad's voice booms out into the dusk, "See here, you vagabond, I've told you already if you want to share the plenty, you'll join the others in the work—"

Aragorn slides into view from around the opened door, rubbing wryly at his cheekbone, and Halbarad's eyes go very wide. Then he begins to laugh.

"Ai, vagabond indeed, skulking at the back door. You sly rascal. I did not hear the gatemen call!"

"I thought I'd not disturb them," says Aragorn, waving a vague hand behind him at the wall.

"Thought you'd not let them disturb you, more like," says Halbarad with a knowing grin.

"Halbarad?" comes a voice from inside. "You're letting out the heat… Aragorn!" And then he is being accosted and hustled through the dim tunnel of the scullery and into the large and flickering room that is the house of Halbarad, long table and crackling hearth, and the smells of roasting and baking and sweet heady ale….

"Your cloak, my lord," says Thaliel, reaching already to unpin the damp thing.

"No, I shall not intrude tonight, I only meant for Halbarad to know—"

"Such nonsense you speak! You are just in time to be fed, and you shall not go to your own house this night; it shall be aired and heated first. No arguments, my lord," when he opens his mouth to do just that. "I shall not be crossed!"

She whirls away with his cloak and coat and beneath the wad of them pressed to her belly he notices for the first time.…

"You know how she gets," says Halbarad, coming alongside and pressing a frothy tankard into his hand. His face is soft as only his wife and girls can make it, all the sharp lines smoothing away.

Aragorn claps him on the shoulder, feels himself begin to grin. "I am happy for you, cousin. How long?"

"Three months yet, she reckons. A babe for Yule." But for a moment Halbarad's grey eyes darken, and Aragorn swallows his first mouthful and lowers the tankard with a soft exhale.

"Is she well?" he asks quietly.

"Aye, she is well enough," but his gaze does not leave her as she stoops and levers their youngest onto her hip. "I am only edgy, after…." Halbarad trails away.

Aragorn sweeps her with an examining eye, and though the skin of her face is slightly sallow and her collarbones sharper than he would like to see... "She is not as thin as last time."

"We have made certain she eats well." Halbarad turns his own ale slowly in his hands. "She was bleeding, a month or so past," he goes on after a moment. "But Ivorwen put her to bed and said not to worry, if she does not strain herself, all will be well."

Aragorn receives this silently, and takes a long draw from his tankard. Then he sets it on the table and crosses the room and divests Thaliel of her four-year-old daughter and tosses the delighted, squealing child high enough to dust the rafters with her billowing skirt.

-o0o-

Sometime in the night he awakens uneasily, not knowing why. He is flat on his back, as near to the hearth as he can get without singing his breeches and shirt. The pallet beneath him is more cushion than he has felt for months, and the relentless vigilance that guards him in the Wild has retreated somewhere into the recesses of his mind. He was sleeping deeply enough that it takes him a moment to remember… Halbarad's house.

From the shadows at the rear of the room a shape detaches itself and crosses to the little cistern near the scullery door. Aragorn hears the faint ascending scale of water filling a cup and rolls over to drift back into oblivion.

But a second pair of footsteps shuffle and there comes the rustle of the curtain being pushed aside, and Thaliel's voice, wavering strangely, "Halbarad…?"

And then there is a muffled _thud_ and Halbarad at the water cistern dives for her, the cup clattering on the wooden floor, and just as quickly Aragorn lunges to his feet and seizes a brand from the fire and with it lights the lantern in the center of the table. As the glow chases back the shadows he sees Halbarad crouched over his wife where she sags against the table-leg, and beneath her is a dark stain spreading and spreading and beginning to run into the cracks between the floorboards….

Aragorn kneels beside her and lifts her wrist, feels her pulse faint and fitful against his fingertips. The skirt of her pale nightdress is clinging darkly to her thighs and he snatches the lantern from the table and sets it near her feet. He mutters, "I am sorry, Thaliel, I must…" but then there is not time to speak for he has peeled away bloody cloth and seen the dreadful hemorrhage, recognized its source, and he shifts and pushes both fists hard against her belly, as low as he can fit them against that sturdy bone.

"Halbarad."

His cousin is cradling Thaliel's head and does not look at him nor answer until Aragorn lifts one vital hand and seizes Halbarad by his shirt front.

"Look at me! Ivorwen. Go and bring Ivorwen, Halbarad, you must go now." He sends him with a shove. Thaliel has begun to shake, but Halbarad scrambles to his feet and races out the front door. For an age it seems Aragorn sits with her, pushing both hands against her rounded belly, praying that his efforts to stop the bleeding will not harm the babe within, praying that the girls in their bed in the loft will not wake to see their mother collapsed in a pool of her own blood on the floor. She does not speak, but grips his knee beside her hard enough to bruise and fights to stay still beneath the relentless crush of his hands.

"Breathe, Thaliel, good girl, deep breaths. I've got you, I'm not going to leave…" _Ai, Halbarad, make haste…._

And then Ivorwen is there, murmuring, soothing, her slender, nut-brown hands pressing and gliding, slipping beneath the bloodied skirt to emerge bloodied themselves. Still his hands compress Thaliel's abdomen; he can feel each contraction as it comes and grips her like a claw. They are now so near together her womb does not soften completely from one before the next takes hold. He cannot tell if the bleeding has slowed. He knuckles down more firmly.

"Halbarad," says Ivorwen sharply, taking her younger grandson by the wrist and tugging him to the floor beside her. She pushes his fisted hands against Thaliel's belly as Aragorn's had been, and as soon as she is satisfied she pulls Aragorn to his feet and draws him out of earshot. The sudden relaxation of his forearms and wrists makes them feel watery with fatigue. He flexes his fingers and lowers his head so Ivorwen does not have to stretch to speak to him.

"Eight fingerwidths, at least," she says in a hushed voice. Her blood-slicked hands are trembling; she clenches them tightly. He glances and sees her bright eyes are dull with sorrow. "She is losing it, but we will lose her as well if we do not slow the bleeding."

There is more she needs to say—he can tell the words are hovering on her tongue. She does not wish to speak them, and so he speaks them for her.

"If you reach inside to stem it, you will harm the child."

There are tears in Ivorwen's eyes when she says, "Aragorn, I cannot… I cannot do what must be done… if it is still alive…."

"Perhaps enough liquor…."

"We can only try, but she is already far gone. And so much blood… I fear the placenta has detached." Ivorwen looks up at him, and the first tear spills and trickles. "Why? Why so many, and this the second for them…."

Aragorn does not answer. He does not have an answer. But in that moment Thaliel groans and levers herself up on her elbows and the answer is not Aragorn's to find; in flurried seconds later it slips still and blue-skinned into his hands, already capped with a thatch of dark hair. And Ivorwen's eyes are no longer shadowed, but intent on her task as she kneels between Thaliel's thighs with arms bare past the elbows and determinedly begins to press back the torrential flow of blood.

Aragorn sits on his heels. He draws the limp discolored body to his chest as if to warm it. It is already warm, but at some nameless compulsion Aragorn closes his eyes and unfurls a tendril of his mind and finds no responding presence. Warm from Thaliel's body only. He bows his head and turns the impossibly tiny babe enough to see….

"Give him to me," says a voice, flat and resolute. Aragorn obeys without thought. As carefully as if he holds a live and fragile child he gentles Halbarad's son into Halbarad's hands. And then he turns away, and reaching down to the well of healing deep within himself he lifts Thaliel's hand and begins what will be a long battle to ensure the three who sleep unheeding in the loft will not be robbed of a mother, this time.

-o0o-

Dawn is beginning to bend around the shutters when he draws the curtain behind him, concealing Halbarad and Thaliel as they lie together memorizing the face of their firstborn son, come far too early. He is weary as he has not been for many years. He wonders fleetingly if this is how it is to feel very old—thin and tired and sick in the soul. But then a rustling at the top of the loft-ladder draws his eye and he sees them there in triplicate, each a little smaller than the last, frowsy-haired and nightgowned and afraid. The floor near the table has been scrubbed but there is still a mark, and he passes it and stands at the base of the ladder.

For a moment he does not look up. He knows they are awaiting reassurance, and raises his hand and grips the rung before him as if to climb and join them in the loft. For the first time he notices a dark stain splattered on the cuff of his right sleeve, and though he knows it has been dry for an hour he tries to paint it away with his thumb. This does nothing to erase it, so instead he drops his hand and folds the sleeve up until the dark smear is secreted in the crease.

Then he takes a steadying breath and raises his head and says, softly, "Shall we go to Daeradar's for breakfast?"

They do not dress out of their nightgowns, but slip bare feet into doeskin shoes and wait near the door while Aragorn banks the fire and ensures the kettle is filled. He cloaks Iolanthe and Lútha against the chill morning and lifts Eluned and envelops her inside his coat.

Somewhere along the path Lútha sidles close without looking up at him and tucks her hand into his coat pocket, and this is how they arrive at the house of Dírhael, walking abreast, unspeaking. Aragorn shifts Eluned to his hip and raises his fist and raps upon the door.

Dírhael answers, stepping aside as he does so, as if he has been expecting them and would wait no longer to have them in his kitchen. He drops a kiss on Iolanthe's dark head and pokes a gentle finger into Lútha's belly. He takes Eluned from Aragorn and stands her on the floor and pats her towards the stove, where Ivorwen, blessed Ivorwen, has begun to fry pork and poach eggs and steep fragrant tea. She looks weary enough to fold boneless to the floor, but she has changed out of her bloodied shift and kirtle and welcomes the girls and immediately engages their help in kneading out the breakfast bread.

Aragorn hesitates, only halfway through the door. He casts a look behind him and sees it has begun to snow, hefty flakes that drift all the slower for it, unflurried by any wind. Through them at the far edge of the village sits a stone shed, re-chinked and thatched into a shabby but serviceable cottage, and he knows it has lain empty since last he was here in the village. In it is a tiny fireplace of stone, and a jar of pipeweed on the single shelf above the water barrel, and a cot heaped high with skins and blankets. It offers a small pocket of solitude, and suddenly he feels as if he has done all he can do now for his cousin's family. He reaches behind him for his hood, even as his shoulder begins to lead him out the door.

A clasp above his elbow halts him. He turns to see a broad hand, the skin between thumb and forefinger furrowed with a dark scar. For a moment he stares at it, as his fatigue-laden mind tries to fathom why he is being detained. His gaze flickers to Dírhael's face and he is struck for the first time how very like his mother this man looks. They have the same lofty cheekbones, the same expressive, heavy brows, though Dírhael's are dusted with a fine frost.

And beneath them are eyes that meet his own unfalteringly, and there is nothing in them but knowing, and a wrinkle of sorrow at the corners that no amount of laughter can completely smooth away. Aragorn realizes that somewhere in his years of wandering, of ghosting in from distant countries to stay no longer than duty demands, of secluding himself and sequestering himself and contorting in his efforts to cause these hardy folk no inconvenience, this man has learned him anyway. Learned his mind and the lonesome spaces in his spirit and how he feels in many ways adrift, unfettered to the people he was born to but knew not until he was a man full-grown. Dírhael need not speak these things. They are there in the quiet of his keen grey eyes.

His grandfather shifts his hand to circle Aragorn's bicep and draws him, gentle and unyielding, into the fire-warmed and glowing kitchen.

"Come and tell us of your long patrol," he says, pressing the door closed behind them. "And we shall tell you of all the good things that have happened in your absence."

-o0o-

_Thank you so much for reading, and for all the favorites and follows and kind words. And many thanks to Random Rohirrim, whom I couldn't PM, but your lovely review made my day!_

_The next installment shall be along directly._


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